Jonathan Signs 2014 Budget

Oluokun Ayorinde/Abuja

President Goodluck Jonathan this morning signed the 2014 Appropriation Act into law.

Following this, the president directed Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy to start implementation.

The president signed the budget into law before he left for South Africa on Friday morning.

Presidency sources revealed that the president actually signed the budget into law on Wednesday. But he reportedly could not hand over the document to the Finance minister because she was not around.

The budget was handed over to her at a brief ceremony at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, before the president left for Pretoria, South Africa for talks with African leaders on how to combat terrorism on the continent.

Details of the budget signed into law were not available as at the time of filing this story.

But it was learnt that the Minister of Finance may address journalists later today and she is expected to give details of the budget at the media event.

Labaran Maku, Minister of Information told journalists last week that President Jonathan refused to sign the 2014 appropriation bill passed by the National Assembly into law earlier because of distortions in the document by the lawmakers.

In passing the bill,  the National Assembly raised the amount in the document from the N4.642 trillion submitted by the President to N4.695 trillion.

“There are few areas of distortions and there are those areas that are very serious and we think there is a need to look into them because of the negative impact those distortions may have on the implementation of the budget.

“We will do everything possible to reconcile the few differences that emerged in what was transmitted to the government by the National Assembly,” Maku told journalists.

It was not certain as at the time of this story whether those distortions have been corrected.